Better Keep Your Head Held High
by blacksouledbutterfly
Summary: The summer before college was supposed to be about relaxing. But when they wake up to a world full of zombies the gleeks have to fight to survive. And who would have thought Rachel Berry would be the one prepared for all of this?
1. So Much For Summer

It's about a hundred degrees inside when she wakes up, unusually warm for the inside of her house at that time of year. Normally her fathers keep the air conditioning up high enough for them to be comfortable all summer long. But at first she thinks it's just the alcohol. There had been an end of year party at Mike's house the night before and while Rachel isn't usually one to drink all that much she had thought it was fitting to drink a little bit. She had just graduated high school after all. And it wasn't every day that you actually graduated from high school. And she distinctly remembers that the last time she had drank at a party she had been extremely warm when she woke up in the morning. So she can only assume that's what's happening there. That she's waking up overly warm because she had been drinking the night before.

She's sweating a ridiculous amount as she wakes up. It makes her feel disgusting and her hair sticks to her face, her skin sticks to the sheets and the pillow case. It's the most disgusting feeling in the world to wakeup covered in sweat. She doesn't care if she sweats when she's doing something strenuous because it's a sign of achievement but she hadn't done anything strenuous that night and she hates waking up feeling that way. But it's not until she wakes up that she realizes the air conditioning isn't on at all. She can't hear the dull clicking of the machine working so she knows that it's not on.

It's bright when she opens her eyes. Too bright. Her alarm didn't go off and when she looks at her bedside table the clock isn't lit up. So there must have been a power surge and her family overslept, that's all. It makes complete and utter sense. So when she throws her legs over the edge of the bed she figures that the power must have gone out because of a heat wave. It's happened once or twice before. The power should be back in a short period of time and her fathers are probably downstairs having some water and waiting for her to get up. They've never been much for waking her before it was absolutely necessary so that doesn't concern her at all.

Everything seems relatively normal despite the heat as she pads her way across her bedroom floor to her window. And she's a big girl. She can handle the heat. She'll just take a quick cold shower and wait for the power to go back on. Or at least that's what she figures until she throws open her curtains and looks outside. And there, on her neighbor's front lawn is her neighbor, hunched down on the ground, leaning over what looks like his wife. And for a moment Rachel thinks that his wife must have passed out from the heat. Until the husband lifts up his head and she sees the blood dripping out of his mouth.

She stumbles backwards until the backs of her legs hit the bed and she falls down onto it with a dull thudding sound, her bedsprings creaking beneath the weight of her. That's when the silence really starts to get to her. She doesn't hear a single sound throughout her entire house. Not a single sound and she thinks that's scarier than actually hearing something. She can't hear her fathers moving around downstairs or anything of the like. And so the anxiety and paranoia that comes naturally to her starts to sink in.

She slides down off of her bed onto the floor as quietly as she can, gropes under her bed for the baseball that she keeps there in case of an emergency. Her hand closes around the handle, the wood feeling so solid in her hand that it's actually comforting. Rising slowly she turns her head towards the bedroom door, pulls the bat out from under the bed and slowly stands, makes her way towards the door. "Dad?" she calls out, so afraid of letting her voice carry too much. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong though she's not quite sure what yet.

She opens the door slowly, bat held tightly in her hand, waiting like she's sure that there's something out there waiting for her, waiting to jump out at her. But the hall is empty so she makes her way towards her fathers' room. The door is wide open when she gets there and there's no sign of either of her fathers in there. There's not a single sign of them at all. The room looks completely in order, like they had just climbed out of bed and gone downstairs for breakfast. It makes her mouth feel dry.

"Daddy?" Her bare feet make their way across the hall floor, her tiny body barely making any sound as she moves. She's not sure what she's going to find when she gets downstairs but if the way her heart is pounding is any indication she's not going to find anything that she _wants_ to find.

The floor creeks beneath her feet as she steps down off of the bottom step and she can't stop herself from flinching when she hears in. her heart pounds harder than before and her grip on the bat tightens as she waits, waits, waits. She doesn't even realize she's holding her breath until the air comes rushing out of her. But now? Now she just doesn't want to make any noise. Because she has no idea what's actually waiting for her but she has to go see.

Then she hears a sound, in the kitchen. She hears a strange sound that she can't quite explain, one that she knows is familiar but she's not sure what it is yet. Her grip on the bat loosens and then tightens again before she slowly makes her way towards the kitchen, her steps mimicking the dancer movements that she's developed after years of ballet and tap and all sorts of other classes. But she can't even think of all the ways she could use that experience as a way to sound impressive.

The sound comes again as she presses her back against the wall just next to the kitchen doorway, takes a slow, deep breath. She doesn't want to look. She really doesn't. But if she doesn't look she'll just end up standing there forever and she doesn't want that either. She can't do that because something is most definitely going on. And if she doesn't know what's going on then things will just seem off for her. Very, very off.

She lets out the breath as slowly as she can and then she looks around the corner, feels sick at what she sees. Her father's glasses are by the kitchen doorway on the floor, a splatter of blood on one of the lenses. But that isn't what scares her or makes her feel sick. It's her father lying on the floor. His eyes are open, looking up into nothing, one arm up near his head. There's blood pooled on the floor around him on the floor. And her other father is leaning over him.

"Daddy?" But she knows as soon as she says it that she shouldn't have spoken. Because her father lifts up his head and looks up at her but he's not there. His face is smeared with blood and there's something in his teeth. At first she can't figure out what it is but she eventually realizes it's a piece of skin stuck between his teeth, her father's skin. His eyes are cloudy, like there's a white film over them. But he doesn't say anything. He just lets out this groaning sound that's guttural and not at all human.

She takes a step back like she wants to run but she has no intention at all of running, no intention at all. She doesn't want to run. She has this feeling running will do no good. And she knows that's true when her father tries to stand up, all jerky movements like his muscles and limbs aren't working anymore.

Rachel lets out a sob and lifts up her bat. "Sorry, Daddy." And then she does something that should be unthinkable. She lifts the bat up and slams it into her father's head. Blood shoots out of his mouth and sprays against the kitchen wall. He stumbles a little but tries to move again. So she slams the bat into his head again and then he falls backwards. After that it's all a quick jumble of movements because she's moving forward, lifting the bat up over her head and bringing it down with both hands into her father's head. Again and again and again. Blood and something thicker splatters around the kitchen, hits her in the face and she hears sobbing but she doesn't even realize it's hers. She keeps hitting and hitting and hitting until what the bat hits sounds mushy and then she just openly sobs.

She collapses to the floor, her father's blood starting to cover her legs, seeps into the fabric of her shorts. She has no idea what she's even doing, what she should do next but as she looks at her other father lying there with his sightless eyes she knows. She sits up and heaves the bat over her head and shakily brings it down onto her other father's head. 

* * *

><p>Noah Puckerman has a killer hangover and at first he can't quite remember why. He doesn't even remember drinking all that much the night before at the party. But then when he actually stops to think about it he had a shitload to drink. A whole lot more than he had originally intended to drink but he couldn't help it. It was a party, alright? And this Cheerio that Santana invited that he had slept with freshman year kept on hitting on him and he was doing a mental debate about whether or not he should sleep with her again.<p>

He's pretty sure he ended up sleeping with her but the second half of the night is mostly a blur so he must have drank more than he thought he did. And that's why when he rolls out of bed he feels like he might throw up but he doesn't. He has a splitting headache though so he makes his way down the hall to the bathroom, stumbling the entire way. He opens the medicine cabinet in a quick, almost violent gesture and downs a few aspirin before he climbs into the shower.

The water is cold but that's just what he needs to wake him up. It hits him and he lets out a small gasp. And he thinks that maybe he didn't sleep with that Cheerio because he usually doesn't wake up feeling horny as all fuck when he had sex the night before. That's why he ends up reaching down and taking himself in his hand, rubbing one out while standing in the cold shower. It helps his headache and the hangover to be in the shower and it helps relieve stress to jerkoff in the shower. But maybe he did sleep with that Cheerio and is just horny anyway. He's not sure but he's not exactly about to call her and ask her. He learned a long time ago that girls get insulted when you don't even remember if you've fucked or not.

He ends up going back down the hall to his room with his towel around his waist. The summer heat stops him from freezing as he moves and he hastily pulls some clothes on, barely even looks at what he's wearing. He can't. He's exhausted and he wants to go downstairs, get some coffee and then have some food. He needs something in his stomach or he's going to puke his guts out and he doesn't want to do that. Not by a longshot.

He comes trotting down the stairs and heads towards his kitchen when he hears some sort of a growling sound behind him. He thinks it's just his imagination until he hears it again. And he figures it must be his annoying sister. She's always doing shit like that to him when he comes home late, like she knows he's going to have a splitting headache. And so he fully intends to turn around and yell at her for giving him such a hard time, for making his headache worse.

But when he turns around he doesn't see his little sister standing there. Instead he sees his mother coming down the hall and her motions are a little jerky but somehow she still manages to be quick. Her hands are outstretched, fingers curled into claws and she launches herself at him, slams into him and sends him flying backwards onto the ground with her on top of him. His hands are on her shoulders to try to push him away but it doesn't work. Her nails dig into his cheek and rip his skin open. Blood runs down his face but he barely notices it. He's too busy calling out to her to try to get her to stop.

Her mouth snaps at the air like an animal trying to get at a scrap of food and there's something strange about her eyes. They look cloudy and murky like maybe she can't really see him all that well. And maybe she can't. He's not sure. All he knows is that there's something off about her and he's actually fucking scared. And yeah, his mom is intense and kind of nuts sometimes but she's never scared him like that before. And he's actually really fucking scared for his life.

He hears a door open and he thinks that it must be his sister. He opens his mouth to yell at her to get out of there, that there's something wrong with their mother but the words never leave his mouth. Because the next thing he knows he hears this loud sound that's both a pop and a bang and it's strange and it makes his ears ring. But he can't really focus on that for too long because the top of his mother's head is suddenly gone and a spray of blood hits his face.

His mother's body goes limp and collapses on top of him and for a moment he just lays there panting wondering what the fuck just happened. It's not until he pushes her body off of him and he can sit up that he sees Rachel Berry standing in the doorway with a revolver in her hand, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, her legs planted so they're shoulder's length apart. She looks completely and utterly calm as she stands there and he can't help but let out this grunt of surprise and go, "What the fuck is going on?"

Rachel just shrugs with one shoulder and tucks the gun into the back pocket of her jeans which should be too tight to do that but she somehow manages. "Did she bite you?"

"What? No. She just fucking scratched me."

"Good. Or I'd have to put a bullet in your head too, Noah. And I really don't want to have to do that. It would be a shame to have to do that since I'm pretty sure you're one of the only people who can actually stand me."

"Rachel!" He tries not to sound impatient with her but he can't really help it as he stands up and wipes at the blood on his face. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Zombies," she replies simply as she reaches out and takes his hand in hers and leads him slowly down the hall so she can make him sit down in the downstairs bathroom and clean off the cuts on his face.

"Zombies? Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. I woke up this morning to find my one father eating the other one. I had a bit of a complicated morning." She patted at the scratch marks with a cotton ball covered in peroxide and narrowed her eyes as she looked at the wounds. "I tried calling Finn but his phone is off the hook. And your house is closer so I thought I'd stop by and check on you. Good thing I did, too. Or else you would have been breakfast. And I don't think that's how you wanted to spend your summer."

"And how the hell did you end up with a damn gun?"

"It was my dad's."

"Your dad had a gun?"

"They both decided that it would be a good idea to be prepared just in case. They kept it in a gun safe, let me know the combination in case I needed it. They even taught me how to fire it. Never thought I'd have to use it for something like this. Well, I wouldn't say _never_. I always said that it would be a good idea to be prepared whatever the situation might be."

"Wait…are you telling me you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? Fucking seriously?"

"Well, as unlikely as I always thought the idea of a zombie apocalypse was I thought that even if it was a million to one shot that something like that would actually happen it was best to be prepared. Because even things that have a million to one shot at happening can, in fact happen. And I think your mother trying to eat your face off is proof of that. Wouldn't you agree?"

But the thing is that Puck really doesn't want to agree. It just feels like if he agrees its saying that he's worried or freaked out or scared. And yes, he is. A little bit. His mother was apparently a fucking zombie that tried to devour his face and if it hadn't been for the little diva he would be one of those undead fuckers, too. Not fucking cool. But he doesn't say that. He just makes himself not flinch when the peroxide touches his cheek again and then sighs a little bit. "So, no answer at Finn's house?"

"No. But that might not mean anything. I'm not assuming the worst until I have a very good reason to."

"You heading over there?"

"Yes. But I'm not leaving you here on your own."

"I can take care of myself."

"As evidence by the fact that I just saved your life."

Puck opens his mouth to tell her that she did no such thing but the fact is that she did. He just hates the idea of admitting it. So he closes his mouth and clenches his jaw. "I wasn't prepared."

"Of course," she soothes. "But there's safety in numbers and it's definitely not a good idea to go about things on our own. I was just out there and it was utter chaos. I have a few supplies from my house but we have no idea what's really happening, where we can go that's safe. We don't know how many people are affected, how many people are left alive. We don't know anything right now. So we need to make sure that things are alright. We need to make sure that we have supplies just in case. We have to be prepared."

"I thought you said you _were_ prepared."

"It never hurts to be more prepared." She takes her hands away from his face and throws out what's in her hands. "So, I think we should definitely pack up whatever might be useful here and go look for the others. Check and see if they're alright. You should pack clothes and we should pack nonperishables. Things we know aren't going to go bad. Dry goods, canned goods. I have some camping pots and pans left over from a trip my dad went on last year with his father so we should be good that way."

"You're really that concerned about the others?" He sort of understands it and he sort of doesn't because the others have been back and forth between being nice to her and being complete assholes. He can't understand why their safety would matter that much to her but he supposes Rachel just wants to see how many of them are still alive.

"Yes," she answers without hesitating. "Go back upstairs. Pack clothes. Not a whole lot. We have to travel as light as possible. Just take whatever you need. And anything you don't want to leave behind because we don't know if we'll ever be coming back. Only important sentimental stuff though. You can't take everything. I'll pack up some food and stuff. Okay?"

"I guess." But his mind is already going over what he should bring. And then something hits him as he goes to standup and he pauses halfway. "Beth…"

She looks at his face for a whole handful of seconds before she finally looks away, shakes her head. "I called Shelby but no one answered. That doesn't mean anything either though. She could be out. She could be doing exactly what we're doing. There's no need to assume the worst. And if we have to we'll go there. It'll take time but we'll keep trying to call and we'll go check on her."

She doesn't say anything more to him before she heads back out into the hall to go do what she said she would do.

"How are you so calm?" he calls after her. "Why aren't you freaking the fuck out?"

"You have no idea what I'm feeling inside, Noah," she calls back to him. And he knows that much is true at least. He doesn't know what's going on in her head. For all he knows she could be just about having a heart attack right now but she's remaining calm, cool and collected on the outside. And that's almost as frightening as what's happening.

"Mom kept the canned stuff in the basement," he tells her as he steps out into the hall and goes upstairs. He knows a couple of things he has to bring with him besides clothes. He has to bring his yearbook just in case others are dead. He has to bring the picture of Beth he has framed and the one from when he and his sister stayed at their grandmother's house for a week last year. And his guitar. He can't leave without his guitar.

He's in the middle of packing his stuff when he hears a gunshot.


	2. The Blonde In The Road

Quinn spent most of her night up talking to Sam. Ever since he had come back to Lima they had started to become close again. She wasn't sure how she could define their relationship. All she knew was that they had gotten quite close and that she honestly and truly cared about Sam. She knew that the year before when they dated she hadn't been the best girlfriend. She knew she hadn't been a very good girlfriend at all. She had cheated on him and with Finn nonetheless. But the thing of it was that she wasn't even sure why she thought it was worth it to risk losing Sam for Finn.

She could only chalk it up to the fact that she had loved Finn at one point. She had truly and genuinely loved him and the fact of the matter is that you never really lose all of your feelings for your first love. And having him start showing her attention again? That was something she hadn't been prepared for. But yes, temptation had done its job and she had made a mistake. It was a big mistake. She had ended up hurting Sam because she cheated on him with Finn. She hated that she had hurt him. She really, really had.

But the fact of the matter was that she cared about Sam. If she had the chance to choose between the two and be with Sam she would have. She wished Sam never found out that he was with Finn in any shape or form. And she regretted hurting him. Because Sam had been better to her than any guy ever had. He had treated her like a princess. He had loved her. And deep down she had loved him. She had never been happier than when she was with him. But she had ruined things for a chance to turn around and be with her first love all over again. And then Sam had moved on to Mercedes.

As they started to talk during the course of the school year though they got close to each other. They became friends again. They spent a lot of time taking even while Sam seemed to want to get back together with Mercedes. And they spent time talking to each other. So, after they both got home after the party that night and Quinn was lying in bed trying to fall asleep she picked up her phone and sent a text message to Sam. And instead of getting a text message back Sam had picked up the phone and called her.

They spent most of the night talking, mostly about their plans now that they had graduated. They talked about how Sam was only going to be in Lima for a couple more weeks before he was going to go back home to his family. They talked about her plans to go to Yale and they talked about Sam was going to be going to community college. They talked about how they were going to be so very far apart from each other for a very, very long time. They talked about how they probably wouldn't see each other again until something big happened, something that would bring all of them back together.

In truth she felt a little empty when she thought about that, about never seeing Sam, about not seeing him until they all had a bit of a reunion. She liked spending time with Sam. He made her feel good about herself. He made her feel like she was worth more than life had been giving her so far, that she was worthy of having a good life, of being happy, of being loved. And no one had ever been able to give her all of that before. No man had ever made her feel so loved, so confident, so special.

So, she ended up going to bed really rather late. She had been lying in bed curled up on her side with the phone pressed against her ear, listening to the sound of Sam's voice in her ear. And it has soothed her in a way that she hadn't expected it to. And somehow Sam had known she was falling asleep so he laughed a little bit and he told her that he'd see her soon, that they'd spend some time together before he went back to living with his family.

Despite her lack of sleep though she woke up early. She woke up and she made her way into town for a walk. It was unusually quiet for that time of morning and there were almost no people out there that night but that didn't mean anything. She enjoyed the time to think and she used that time to think about her conversation with Sam. And she used that time to think about all the mistakes she made in her high school life starting with cheating on Finn with his best friend.

Yes, she regretted that. She regretted hurting Finn that way. She regretted not being more careful, not making sure that Puck was actually wearing protection but only because she should have known that trusting him wasn't something she should take lightly when it came to sex. But what she didn't regret was Beth. Yes, she was too young to take care of her at the time but she didn't regret Beth. The mistake of sleeping with Puck had created a beautiful, amazing little girl that she would never regret bringing into the world.

But then she had ended up making the mistake to of cheating on Sam with Finn and believing that Finn wanted her when he had spent most of the time they were together and she was pregnant running around after Rachel. And then, maybe most importantly, in her senior year she made the big mistake of trying to get Beth back. She was so hurt, so sad, so broken over what had happened with her in the two years before that that she had gone a little crazy and tried to get her daughter back from the woman who loved her, who took care of her, who was raising her as her own despite no blood connection. Yes, that was a mistake. She had made many mistakes. But in her defense she missed that little girl.

A lot of people thought that maybe she didn't really care that much about Beth since she knew almost instantly she was going to give her up and her resolve in that had scarcely wavered. And maybe they thought that because once she had given Beth away she never talked about her except in passing. She even acted almost like it never happened. But it was just easier for her that way. It was a way for her to protect herself, keeping Beth locked away in a box on a shelf in her heart. It made dealing with losing her so much easier.

She also knew some people thought she had only wanted Beth back for selfish reasons. So that she could feel like she had a meaning in her life. So that she could find some way to make the sadness go away. But it truly was about loving her. It was about missing her, about wishing she could have raised her on her own, could have taken care of her. She had done it because she wished she could have her little girl back.

She's not sure how long she's been in the park by the time she starts to make her way home but she just knows that she feels strange as she's walking home. Things are too quiet. There aren't many cars out there on the road. There aren't many people. It makes her nervous, anxious. Lima isn't a huge town but it is summer and people are usually out at that time. And the further she goes without seeing anyone the harder it is for her to not get nervous. She keeps glancing over her shoulder, sort of wraps her arms around herself in almost a huddling gesture.

She's almost at her house when it happens. She rounds the corner and someone knocks into her, knocks onto her stomach, the wind knocked out of her. She lands hard on the ground and she ends up biting her tongue hard enough that she tastes blood. And there's a weight on her that she only gets off of her out of sheer panic. She rolls onto her back and there, on the ground just by her side is a man she vaguely recognizes as the man who lives down the street from her though she doesn't remember his name.

She scrambles backwards on all fours like a crab, her eyes wide, swallowing down the blood from where she bit her tongue. The neighbor stays on his knees for a little while and then he starts to push himself up, his head still lowered like he's looking at the ground. And then he lifts his head up and there's something wrong with his face. His cheek is ripped open so deeply that she can actually see the bone of his cheek and his eyes are clouded over. His mouth opens and he growls at her, low and guttural like an animal. The skin pulls back away from his face where it's cut open in such a disturbing way that her stomach churns.

He starts to move towards her and the urge to scream rises up in her so strongly that she nearly chokes in it. Opening her mouth it catches in her throat, comes out as a strangled gasp. Scrambling she rolls over onto her hands and knees and pushes herself up into a standing position and then takes off running as fast as she can, basically tripping over her own feet the entire time.

* * *

><p>Somehow Rachel had managed to convince him that it would be best to take his truck rather than her car. It made sense when she broke it down. His truck was able to hold more supplies and the bed had a cap that could be locked up just in case. And the truth was that he would lament leaving his truck behind more than she would lament leaving her car behind. So, she had gotten him to pack all of their stuff into the back of his truck and they climbed in so they could go check on Finn.<p>

But now? Now Puck is getting mad at her because he's asked her about a thousand times what happened in the basement, who she had shot. He had this sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that it might have been his little sister because he had seen no sign of her after he had woken up that morning. And where the fuck would she be other than in the house?

Puck's hands tighten on the steering wheel and he glances at her out of the corner of is eyes, grits his teeth, his jack ticking as he counts to ten. "Are you going to fucking tell me who the fuck you shot down there, Berry? Or am I going to have to stop the truck in the middle of the fucking road and wait you out? Because I'll fucking do I."

To her credit she didn't look over at him like she was mad. She didn't roll her eyes or make some sort of a growling sound in the back of her throat like he expected. She just kept in the position she was in, arm bent, elbow resting on the door, the back of her hand against the window, her temple resting against her palm. She sat there and looked out the front window like he hadn't just threatened to take even longer to go check on the man she's been claiming to be in love with for three years.

"I don't know," she finally says after several long beats of silence. "I don't know who it was."

"What do you mean you don't know who it is?" He turns his head to look at her completely this time. Getting to Finn's house is taking longer than it should because most of the streets he normally takes are blocked now with abandoned vehicles. "Was it my sister?" He asks the question with a lump in his throat big enough that he feels like he might actually choke on it, that he might throw up or something.

"No." She says it with such confidence he doesn't know if he should even question her but he feels like he has to. He has to know how she can be so sure. But before he can ask she's talking again. "It was a male, first of all. And secondly he was about your mother's age, Noah. Don't ask me who he was because I don't know. But the downstairs window was broken. The one in the back of your basement. He must have gotten in that way. Maybe that's how your mother got infected. No way to tell." Turning her head slightly she sets her dark, big brown eyes on him. "You're simply lucky the house wasn't overrun with those things. Or else you would have been getting a bullet to your brain as I never would have gotten to you in time to stop you from being infected."

"How the fuck do you even know that a bite causes an infection?"

"A bite always causes an infection in the movies. And as movies are the only reference points we have for this situation I'd rather follow their theories than have none to base my actions off of."

Puck just scoffs and looks back ahead of him, shakes his head at the tiny little nothing of a girl that's acting so fucking tough, that keeps talking like she's got all of that shit figured out when how the fuck could she? She's not wrong. None of them have real answers so how is she supposed to know exactly what to do when there are zombies out there trying to fucking eat people?

"Then where the fuck is she?"

Rachel knows it's a rhetorical question but she also feels like she should answer him. He's acted in the past like he doesn't really like his sister all that much but she knows that's not true. But the fact of the matter is that she knows he loves his sister very, very much. And he must be so very, very worried about her out there with everything that's going on. But she can't give him a real answer because she has no idea where his sister might be.

"Children are resilient, Noah," she tries to soothe instead. "I wouldn't let myself worry too much yet if I were you. Just give it some time. I'm sure you'll see that she's just fine. She probably just went into hiding somewhere. Until you have concrete proof that something terrible has happened to her then you should just assume that she's fine."

"Easy for you to say. You don't have any fucking family out there to worry about." He knows that he shouldn't have said that the second the words leave his mouth and that's the only reason he takes his eyes off of the road to look at Rachel. But she's not looking at him. She's looking straight ahead of her.

"Rachel-"

"Stop."

"I'm trying to apologize here-"

"No. Stop!"

The panic in her voice makes him turn his head and when he does he catches a flash of something out of the corner of his eye, something falling into the road. Or to be more exact, a person. He slams on the brakes as quickly as he can and before he can say anything Rachel is yanking open the truck door and hopping down, her hair flying behind her. So, what can he do besides follow her?

Swinging his door open he hops down, the two of them reaching the front of his truck at about the same time. There's someone lying in the road, someone starting to push themselves up and as he looks he realizes he recognizes them. He recognizes them from the shape of their body more than anything. "Quinn?"

Quinn's head shoots up at the sound of Puck's voice, her hazel eyes wide and wild, sort of like you might imagine someone to look after they've seen a ghost- or in this case walking cannibal corpses. She pushes herself up off of the ground and basically launches herself at Puck, not caring that he's not her favorite person in the world right now. He's alive and he knows her and he's not trying to hurt her and that's enough for her. She launches herself at him and wraps her arms around his torso, clings to him like her life depends on it.

His body slams backwards into the front bumper of his truck as the blonde wraps herself around him like that and with his eyes wide he hesitantly returns the embrace, looking over at Rachel like he's trying to get an answer from her but Rachel just arches both of her eyebrows as if telling him that she's got no idea why Quinn ran into the road that way.

Puck's heart pounding in his chest he begrudgingly mouths 'thank you' to Rachel. Not for saving her life or agreeing with not understanding what's going on with Quinn but for seeing Quinn in the road. If he had hit her, if he had hit anyone, he wasn't sure he'd be able to live with himself. Especially with it being someone that he knew. If Rachel hadn't yelled at him to stop? He would have hit her. He would have run her right over and the idea of killing Quinn even with all the shit they've gone through? It made him sick to his stomach.

"Quinn," Rachel says gently as she makes her way closer to the duo, one hand stretched out to gently place on the blonde's shoulder. "Quinn, are you alright? Are you hurt? Are you…bitten?"

"What?" The blonde pulls her face away from Puck's chest, silent tears running down her face and she looks at Rachel like she's never seen her before but really she just hadn't even noticed the petite brunette was there. "What are you talking about? Do I look okay?"

Rachel purses her lips and takes a deep breath and Puck can imagine her counting to ten. "I meant physically speaking, of course. Are you hurt?"

"I…no. I don't think so." Quinn reluctantly unwraps her arms from around Puck to step back and look down at herself. Her palms and her knees are scraped but she doesn't think those are too serious. She doesn't seem to be bleeding. "What do you mean bitten? Who would have bitten me?"

"Zombies." Puck says it as casually as Rachel had said it to him earlier and Quinn turns her head to look at him like he's the biggest idiot she's ever seen, her eyebrows colliding.

"Zombies? Look, I know everyone is acting strange and I'm pretty sure my neighbor has rabies or something because he attacked me, but zombies? Are you serious?"

"Sounds crazy but it's true."

"Look," Rachel cuts in. "As much as I'd love to sit here and have a huge debate as to whether or not this is all true I see this as a very dangerous situation to be in. if we stand here out in the open then we're at risk of getting hurt. Or killed. Or, you know, eaten alive and that's not how I intend to spend any of my time this summer. So, we should probably get back in the truck and continue on our way."

As shaken up as Quinn obviously is the thing is that Puck knows she's right. The longer they stand there the worse off they'll be. And Rachel seems pretty desperate to go check on Finn so he'd rather not listen to her complain about them taking too long. Besides, if they get there and something's happened to Finn after them standing there too long then she'll probably blame the delay and he doesn't need that shit. So he sighs heavily and nods his head, looks down at Quinn. "Look, we're heading to Hudson's to check on him. You should come with us."

For a handful of seconds Quinn wants to tell him in no uncertain terms that she doesn't want to go to Finn's house but then she thinks about Sam and how he's been staying with Finn's family. And that makes up her mind. She's going to go with them to Finn's house. Because she has to know that Sam's alright. So she just nods slightly and lets Rachel put a hand on her arm to lead her towards the passenger side of the truck. The three of them should easily fit in the front anyway.

Puck makes his way to the driver's side seat and climbs up inside of it; watches Rachel hang back so that Quinn can climb up and sit in the middle of the row. And Rachel's halfway into the truck when they hear something. Rachel's hand goes to the gun at her waist instantly, fingers tightening around the grip as she turns around. The gun comes out and she points it in the direction of the sound when a man comes stumbling out.

From her seat Quinn gasps, moves closer to Puck. "That's my neighbor." She'd recognize his face anywhere despite having a hard time remembering his name and with him having chased her she doesn't feel comfortable seeing him there. She almost clings onto Puck's arm but she refuses to act that pathetic.

"Is he one of them?" Puck asks but he's not looking at Quinn when he asks it. He's looking at Rachel.

The brunette doesn't answer him at first. She can't yet. Not until the man gets closer to her and she can see his eyes. And then when she does answer it's with a slight not of her head. So, with both hands on the butt of the gun she levels it and pulls the trigger. The bullet enters the man's brain and his head jolts backwards. His body shakes with the force of the shot and then he his body falls to the ground.

Turning to climb back into the truck Rachel tucks the gun back into her jeans and climbs up into the truck, slams the door behind her. "Go," she urges Puck as she looks at him. "Just go. For all we know the sound will lead any of the others around right to the truck. And I don't have that many bullets."

"You just shot someone," Quinn breathes as she looks at Rachel, her hazel eyes wide again. "You just shot someone in the head. Oh my God. Have you completely lost it?"

"He wasn't a person anymore," Rachel insists as Puck starts driving again. "I know you think we're crazy, Quinn, but the fact of the matter is that we've seen to woken up in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. I found one father eating another this morning and when I got to Noah's house his mother was trying to eat his face off. And in case you haven't noticed there are almost no people out there and there are literally dozens of abandoned cars everywhere. So, if you have a better explanation then please, enlighten me. I'd love to hear it."

"Anything but zombies makes sense. Zombies don't exist."

"Before today I would have agreed with you. But unfortunately for us? They do exist. And for all we know everyone we know has turned into one aside from us."

Quinn obviously doesn't want to believe her but she doesn't know what else to say just yet so she folds her arms over her chest and sits there as Puck drives them towards Finn's house. The street is quiet when they reach it but when they pull up outside of the Hummel-Hudson house half of the windows downstairs are broken.

"I'm going in," Rachel declares while the engine still rumbles.

"Like hell you are," Puck spits at her. "Look at that place. Something got in there and you don't know what you're going to find."

"I need to know for sure what happened to them. If you're so worried about me then why don't you come?"

Puck's jaw clenches and he slams his hand on the steering wheel before he kills the engine and takes his key out of the ignition to shove it into his pocket. "Fine," he grumbles. "But if I get bitten I will fucking bite you and infect you."

"Fair enough."

"You can stay if you want, Quinn," Puck tells her as he climbs out of the truck.

"Are you kidding? I'm not staying in the truck. I don't really believe this zombie theory but if they're out there I'm not staying by myself."

"Suit yourself."

Quinn climbs out of the truck behind Rachel. On her way to the open front door Rachel pulls her gun out of her jeans again. Turning to glance at the other two just outside the house she arches an eyebrow. "You guys ready?"

"As we'll ever be," Puck tells her. But really? He's about as far from ready as a person can get.


	3. A Temporary Plan

Rachel doesn't bother to check and see if Puck and Quinn are following her as she heads for the house. She knows that they probably will. He seems determined not to let her go in there alone and she doesn't seem to want to be in the car by herself despite the fact that she doesn't believe them about the zombies. And that's pretty ridiculous if you look at everything that's going on but for once Rachel keeps her opinion to herself. She doesn't need to get into a fight with Quinn outside of the Hummel-Hudson house when it seems like something had gotten into it. The more noise they make the more likely it is if there is something in there it will hear them. So they have to be as quiet as they possibly can.

She pauses just outside the door and checks her gun. She doesn't have many bullets in the clip. It doesn't hold many to begin with and she's used a few. She won't have time to stop and reload, that's for sure. So if anything is in there she has to be sure to make her shots count. Steadying the gun in her hand she glances at Quinn and Puck, watches them quietly as if to tell them that it's now or never and then cautiously, quietly, she reaches out and turns the doorknob. The door's unlocked which she takes as a very bad sign but that doesn't stop her. She just opens it up and slowly steps inside, glancing around with her gun at the ready.

At first she doesn't see any sign of anything moving. The living room is a total mess. The curtains are shredded, the furniture overturned. The television is smashed and on the floor. She's not sure if it's because there was a fight or if things got destroyed by the zombies but it's still a total mess in there. But there's no sign of anyone yet and at first she takes that to mean that maybe everyone is alright. That is until she inspects the place further and notices the blood splattering the walls.

Stepping further inside she sees something sticking out from the other side of the overturned couch. She points her gun just in case and when she steps closer she gets a look at the guy's face, her heart in her throat. She says a silent prayer hoping that it's no one she knows and when she examines him further she realizes she doesn't know him. She lets out the breath she didn't even know she was holding. The guy's face is messed up, his mouth split wide open, part of the skin on his cheek missing. He's not moving but that doesn't mean anything.

The house is so quiet that she jumps when she feels Puck's hand come down on her shoulder. She glances at him but he doesn't say anything to her, his face completely stoic. Instead he moves closer to the man lying on the floor and kicks him. He kicks him hard. But he still doesn't move. If he was going to jump up to attack it's reasonable to assume he would have already. But just to be sure she nods at him. "Turn him."

"What?"

"Turn him over. We have to check the back of his skull. If it's intact he could still get up."

"You want me to touch a zombie that might get up and bite me? Are you fucking nuts?"

"I'm not going to let him bite you, Noah. He moves, I shoot him. Simple as that."

Puck doesn't even try to stop himself from glaring at her. But despite that he crouches down near the guy, his eyes not leaving Rachel until he actually reaches out and puts his hands on the guy's shoulders and turns him over. The back of his head is a mess of blood and brain matter. It doesn't look like he was shot in the head, more like his brains got smashed up by something heavy and blunt. But with the brain that damaged there's no way that he's going to get up.

Standing back up Puck wipes his hands on his pants, blood and gore getting all over his jeans but, really? Who fucking cares about jeans when you could be eaten by zombies? It would be pretty pathetic to be worried about something that stupid. "Looks like you get to save a bullet."

"Small favors."

Quinn's barely moved from the doorway. She doesn't until after Puck stands back up and when she does she moves over to what was once a table against the wall that's now a pile of wood and smashed up glass. Crouching down she picks up one of the broken picture frames, shakes the glass off and looks at the picture inside of it, sees Finn and Kurt smiling out at her with their parents, the happy family they usually seem to be.

Her eyes linger on Finn's face for a while and she thinks about all the things that have happened between them, all the pain and the hurt. The truth is that at one point she truly loved Finn. People could say all they wanted that she didn't love him and sleeping with Puck proved that but the truth was she had loved Finn. She had made a mistake in sleeping with Puck, a mistake because she hurt the man she loved and because in the end she got hurt, too. But she did love Finn.

Sometimes she wonders what would have happened if she didn't sleep with Puck. Would Finn have ever gotten with Rachel? Would they still be together? Would her high school career have been better? She wasn't sure if her life would really be better if she hadn't slept with Puck but she wasn't sure it would have been worse either. All she knew was that she wouldn't have left him devastated. And she wouldn't have broken up with her first love over a mistake. Maybe they would have fallen apart on their own but it wouldn't have been because she was tempted by his best friend.

She takes the picture out of the broken frame and folds it in half, keeps it in her hand. She's not even sure why she takes it at first. She only knows that she has the urge to. And once she has the picture she puts the frame back down and stands up, looks over at Rachel and Puck. The way the room looks she can only imagine bad things coming from what they may find in the house. She's still not sure she buys the whole zombie thing but something is going on and she knows that for sure.

And her thoughts instantly go to Sam. This was where he moved once he got back to Lima and if the house is that way then maybe something bad happened to him. And while the idea of something happening to Finn made her sad the idea of something happened to Sam hurt her even more. It made her chest feel like it was tight, like it was on fire. She felt sick to her stomach. But she refused to say anything. She refused to let it show. Because if she let if show then maybe that would mean that it would come true. It was a silly thought but she couldn't stop herself from thinking it.

"Are we leaving?" In the quiet of the house her voice startles even herself.

Rachel turns to look at her. "No." Her voice is firm, almost like she thinks the idea of leaving is the stupidest thing ever. She doesn't say that though to her credit. "No, we have to check the house." She has to be sure. She has this sinking feeling that something horrible has happened but at the same time she has to be sure before she lets the pain hit her. She needs to be sure.

She glances at Puck as if asking if he's going to follow her or not but doesn't say anything. Instead she just turns and starts looking through the house. Each room that they go through is the same as the living room. They're a total mess, furniture overturned, things broken, the walls covered in dirt and blood. The more she sees the more she feels like she's going to see something bad.

She's in the hall near the stairs when she finally looks back at Puck, her face stoic but her eyes betraying how sad and worried she is over the fact that they didn't find anyone. "Maybe we should go now. I don't think anyone's here." The fact that they didn't find anyone makes her feel sick to her stomach. Where could they have all been? Could they be wandering around the way she was? Could they have tried to find some place safe? She hopes that's what's going on. She'd hate to think that something bad happened to them.

Puck just nods and sort of motions to her to follow him so that they can leave. She hesitates like she wants to look over the house one more time before she starts to follow him. But something makes her stop. A noise, one that would normally be slight but seems like a bomb going off with the quiet of the house. There's the sound of shifting in the closet by the stairs.

All three of them stop, exchange looks. Puck's eyebrows both go up in question as they all turn to look at the closet. The sound doesn't come again but they all know that they heard it. It wasn't like they had some mass hallucination or anything. They heard something moving in the closet. And maybe it's nothing. Maybe something shifted in there on its own but they know, or at least Rachel knows, that they have to check. Just in case.

Lifting up her gun Rachel points it at the door, her palms sweating even while she tries to remain completely calm and stoic on the outside. There was no good to be found in letting any worry or feel she felt show through. It wouldn't help anyone, least of all then. "Open the door," she whispers to Puck. "I have you covered."

"Why do I always have to be the one to do this shit?"

"I'm the one with the gun. And you're the man. I thought you'd appreciate being the one to have to brave things out. Men are supposed to be the ones to check out strange noises anyway. That's how it goes in horror movies."

"This isn't a horror movie, Berry."

"Really? Because it feels like we're living one right now."

Puck can't argue that logic. He wishes he could but really? They are pretty much in a real horror movie right now. But that doesn't stop him from giving her a dirty look as he moves slowly to the closet door almost as though he's afraid something is going to jump out at him. And given that his mother tried to eat his face off that morning he figures it's a valid fear.

His hand closes around the knob and he glances at Rachel, waits for her to let him know she's ready and then when she nods he swings the door open.

The first thing that happens is there's screaming. From Rachel and from Quinn and from two other distinct voices in the closet. Rachel almost pulls the trigger in surprise but soon she lets out this sort of relieved sobbing laugh and lowers the gun. "Kurt."

"Oh my God. Rachel." Kurt Hummel rushes out of the closet and wraps his arms around his best friend, the muzzle of the gun, though not pointed at him, digging into his stomach. The irony of most openly gay kid in all of Lima rushing out of the closet doesn't escape Puck but he doesn't say anything. So he's grown as a person. Fucking sue him. When you're about to be eaten by zombies there's a time and place to say those things and that wasn't one of them.

Kurt leans back from Rachel to look at her, looks her over like he's trying to be sure that she's alright. His eyes are red and puffy and his face is tearstained. It's no surprise to Rachel that he's been crying. Why wouldn't he be given the situation? She would be if she were him. Well, she would be if she were letting herself feel what was going on. She kept on stopping herself from feeling it though because if she felt it then she'd breakdown entirely. "You're okay," Kurt breathes out.

"I'm fine," Rachel assures him. "Well, as fine as one can be."

Kurt gives her a brave smile and wraps an arm around her again in a hug. His eyes move to Quinn and he gives her a smile, a smile to say he's glad she's alive as well and then when he glances at Puck he gives him a small nod. "I wasn't sure if anyone else was alright. Is anyone else alright?"

Puck shrugged his shoulders just a little bit. "We don't know."

Rachel glances around Kurt to see Burt and Carole still standing in the closet, Burt with a bat still in his hand. When the door opened he had it raised but once he saw Rachel standing there he lowered the bat down to the ground, the tip pressed against the floor. The tip of the metal piece if bent like it was slamming into something hard and there's blood on the end. Rachel can only assume that he was the one who beat the head in of the zombie on the living room floor.

"As nice as this fucking reunion is we should probably get out of the fucking house. Sooner would be better." Rachel wanted to tell Puck that he was being rude but the truth was he wasn't wrong. He wasn't wrong at all.

Burt glances at Puck like he's trying to decide whether he should say anything back to him, whether he should comment on what he said but seems to decide that he shouldn't do it. Instead he just nods, slips his arm around Carole's shoulders and hugs her to his side. "That might be a good idea."

It seems like a strange exodus, the whole group of them leaving the house but once they are on the lawn Rachel turns and looks back at Kurt. "Where's Finn?"

"And Sam?" Quinn hopes she only sounds curious and not worried though she is worried and if she had to admit it she would but she just wants to seem alright. She really does.

"I don't know." Kurt looks like he doesn't want to admit that. And the truth is that he doesn't want to. He had been worried about Finn from the moment he woke up that morning and his house was thrown into chaos. It seemed like the world had exploded into madness. And since he had just spent an hour hiding in the closet with his father and his stepmother he could honestly say it was one of the worst days of his life. But the fact that he had no idea where his stepbrother and Sam were just made things worse. He wishes he had an answer. He wishes he knew what happened to them, if they were alright, where they had gone. But given the fact that they hadn't told them they were going somewhere and they hadn't mentioned that they had any plans. So he has absolutely no idea where they are, what happened to them, if they're alright or not. It's not a good feeling.

Rachel nods, her throat feeling constricted. She tries to remain positive. Finn and Sam could both be fine. They're strong, capable men. They can protect themselves. Sure, this is a scary, dangerous situation but it doesn't mean that something bad happened to either of them. They could be perfectly fine. She just hoped that was true. She hoped that more than anything.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure they're fine." Puck isn't sure of that though. It just seemed like it needed to be said and since no one else was saying it then he might as well. Not that he has all that much faith in Finn's ability to take care of himself in all of this. Sam, sure. But Finn? He's not a complete idiot or anything but he's not the smartest guy in the world. He's really not. So the odds of him being able to do anything to protect himself on his own isn't very likely. Unless he has help then the odds of him being alright are slim to none. Not that he's about to say that out loud in front of the dude's mother, stepbrother and girlfriend. He may be an asshole sometimes but he's not a total idiot.

"Yeah," Rachel agrees though deep down she's not so sure. She hopes that's the case but who can tell for sure? Unless they see them, unless they find them, unless they somehow get in contact with them then they're not going to know for sure.

Kurt stands there, sort of in an awkward position between his best friend and his father like he's not quite sure who he should be closer to. His father is his family and he loves him dearly but he's also quite happy to have just found out that his best friend is still alive. And he has to admit that he's very glad that she's there, that she's alive, that nothing got to her. But at the same time, of course, he's worried. He's worried about Finn and he's worried about Sam. And he's worried about the safety of all of them.

"Did any of you come up with a plan?" Kurt glances at Rachel and the Puck and then his eyes land on Quinn but she's not really looking at them. She's looking off down the street like she's waiting for something. And maybe she is though what it could be he can't even begin to guess.

"No," Rachel admits, albeit a bit begrudgingly. "I had to see if Fi….if you were all alright." She doesn't mention Finn's name because it takes one look at Carole to see how upset she is, how worried she is. And it just makes the worry swell up inside of Rachel. If she mentions his name she's sure that she will lose it. And she can't afford to lose it. She has to keep her calm; she has to stay focused because the easiest way to die is to get distracted. But it's hard not to be distracted with Finn and Sam and everyone else out there probably in immense danger.

"We should find somewhere safe." Turning to look back at the group Quinn shrugs her shoulders. To her it's the most logical move but it also begs the question of where safety is. She's still not quite sure what's going on- she refuses to believe in the fact that there are zombies because it's out of her comfort zone, out of the zone of normality she's used to. But obviously something is going on and whatever it is happens to be quite dangerous for all of them.

Puck nods in agreement, sticks his hands in his front pockets. Standing there on the lawn with the sun beating down on them would be quite enjoyable under different circumstances. But they're in the middle of a fucking zombie crisis and standing out there in the open like that is like wearing big signs that ask to be eaten. And he likes his life, thank you very much. He doesn't want to get eaten by fucking zombies. That's definitely not the way he wants to spend his summer after graduation. No fucking thank you.

"She's right." Rachel agreeing with Quinn is like hell freezing over but Puck doesn't say that. See? He was learning what was inappropriate to say in crisis situations. Really though he just doesn't want the two of them pissed off at him. He's been around both of them when they're pissed. Alone they're both nuts. Together he'd suffocate under the crazy.

Rachel glances down the street, tucks her bottom lip between her teeth and tries to decide what they should do, where they should go. What's the safest place to go? And maybe safety isn't even the issue right now. Finding the others and making sure they're alright is a bigger issue in her mind. Everyone else they know could be in danger. And she just doesn't know how well she'll be able to deal with it is something bad happened to them. As much as they can all fight she never wants to see anything happen to them.

"We need to know who else is alright. It's easier to protect ourselves if we have a stronger force behind us." It sounds both rational and stupid to her own ears. A larger group can slow you down but it can also provide more backup if something bad should happen. It's sort of a double-edged sword. But it's not as though they can just leave their friends behind. If they're alright she can't imagine them not trying to protect each other, get together to find somewhere safe to be.

"We should send a text." Kurt glances around at everyone to see what everyone else thinks of that idea. When no one protests he shrugs a little and continues with his thought. "Tell them we're going to meet up and come up with a plan. Hopefully everyone will be alright and come meet us. But…" He doesn't finish his thought because he doesn't want to admit that there's a distinct possibility that their friends are dead. The very idea is devastating.

Rachel nods slowly, her bottom lip still tucked between her teeth as she looks back at her best friend. She tucks her gun back into her waistband, folds her arms across her chest as she tries to decide what the best thing to say is, what the best place to meet up is. "The school," she finally decides. "We can stay there for a short period of time. We wouldn't be able to stay there long but we can all meet up there. We can lock it down." They can't stay there long though and she knows it. If they do then it's just asking for them to all be found out. And if they get found boy the zombies then they'll get eaten. "Kurt, do you think you can send out the text?"

"I…sure."

"I hate to point out that this plan sucks but…this plan sucks." Puck ignores the glare that Rachel sends his way. It's not the first time he's been on the receiving end of a Rachel Berry glare. "Look, meeting up with everyone is fine. Whatever. But how the hell are we supposed to protect everyone at the school with your little gun and a bat? That's a big place to protect with no weapons. Just saying."

Rachel purses her lips, tries to find a flaw in his logic but can't find any. He's not wrong, sadly. But he's not exactly right either. "Looks like we're going to have to go into town." Looking at Puck she arches both of her eyebrows. "You know as well as I do there are things in town we can use. Sleeping bags and other gear from the outdoors store. And there's a gun store, too. We can get things we're going to need."

"I'll go with you."

"No." Rachel looks at her best friend with what almost seems like remorse. "No, you should wait at the school. Meet with anyone who comes. That way they won't be alone when they get there. It's the best."

"Why can't Puck wait for them there?" Kurt doesn't seem to understand which she supposes she gets.

"Because this may require breaking and entering and out of all of us he's the only one that may be able to get us into the store."

"Hey." Puck does his best to look like he's offended but when Rachel gives him a look he doesn't say anything. What can he say? She's not wrong. He's probably the only one that can get them into the stores. But that doesn't mean he likes that she instantly associates breaking the law with him. Sure, he's fucked up a lot. He's done some stupid shit but that doesn't mean that's all he's good for. But yeah, it comes in handy at times like this. He bets no one ever thought what he did would help them out.

"Rachel…."

"She's right, Kurt." It's the first time Carole has really spoken since they got outside. She's leaning against Burt, her entire posture broken down like she's barely keeping herself together. And that's probably the case. Her son is out there somewhere and they don't know if he's alright. "We don't want your friends showing up at the school and having no one there to meet them. I know you don't want to leave your friends but it might be for the best."

"We'll be fine," Rachel assures her friend, takes his hand in hers and gives it a squeeze. "I promise. Just stay with your parents and we'll get back to the school as soon as possible. I promise we'll be fine." The smile she gives him doesn't shine nearly as brightly as she wished it could but she's not sure of anything anymore and the promise tastes like a lie.

"We can take our van." Burt's arm tightens around his wife and when his son gives him a searching look he just nods at him. "I know you don't want to do this, Kurt. But this could work."

"Pack up whatever you need," Rachel tells them. "Nothing you don't. Clothes, nonperishables. Only the things you need." Reaching out she takes Kurt's hand in hers again, squeezes down and then she steps back towards Puck's truck. "You can go with Kurt and his family if you don't want to come with us," she says, turning her head to look at the blonde girl.

"I think I'll be near the gun, thank you."

Rachel shrugs just a tiny bit as if to say that's fine with her and opens the truck door.

Puck just hopes the gun doesn't get used on Quinn at some point.


	4. The Pet Shop Encounter

Rachel isn't quite sure why Quinn wanted to come with them. It's not as though she particularly likes Rachel nor is she actually close to Noah any longer but she wasn't going to argue with her. If she wanted to come with them rather than head off to the school with Kurt and his family that was fine. It was her prerogative. And if something bad happened? Well, all Rachel could hope was that she had enough bullets in her gun to keep them safe.

She's pretty sure she should find how easily Noah manages to get them into the store rather scary. The alarm system doesn't even go off when they get inside and she's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But she simply counts her blessings because the sound could attract them a lot of unwanted attention.

She moves around the store, glancing over her shoulder at both Quinn and Noah as she moves through the store. They each pick up various things. Quinn picks up sleeping bags and blowup pillows which Noah brings out to the truck without so much as a word. He somehow- she doesn't ask- managed to get into the case where they keep all of the knives and got a few of them. And she picks up other necessities- flashlights, camping cookware, plates and batteries and all manner of things that seemed stupid but were going to become necessary.

She and Quinn are combing back into the store after depositing their last bunch of stuff into the bed of the truck when Rachel realizes she has no idea where Noah is. She knows he's not stupid enough to wander off on his own but that doesn't stop the panic from coursing through her. She can't see him and she doesn't hear him at first. She doesn't hear anything. And then she hears a clunking in the back, her hand instantly going to the gun in her waistband. "Rach!" She lets out the breath she doesn't even realize she's been holding when she hears him call her name, her hand easing away from the gun.

She makes her way to the back of the store where she heard his voice coming from and finds him standing near the gun counter. She never understood why they sold guns in that store, why the camping gear wasn't income enough but she never thought to ask. And she's honestly glad that at that point that they did sell weapons. Noah's hand is resting on the edge of one of the glass cases, an axe resting just in front of his fingertips. "Take your pick, Berry."

"I don't think I want to know just how mastered the art of picking locks, Noah."

"No," he agrees, a slow smirk spreading across his face. "You really don't want to know." The look on his face makes the corners of her mouth twitch slightly with the desire to smile but she refrains given the dire situation they're in. "So, what do ya say? Think we should stock up on weapons and ammo and shit? Smart thing to do, right?"

"Quite smart indeed." She does smile then, a sort of proud smile that flickers across her face so quickly he's not even sure he sees it but in the end he knows it's there. "Ammunition is definitely a good idea. I don't think we would need too many guns if we have enough ammunition. Perhaps a few more." Pausing she glances over her shoulder to where Quinn is standing, running her fingers along one of the displays. "Perhaps we should get a small caliber one for Quinn. I can show her how to fire it when we're not so out in the open."

"Can't be that hard."

"If you're not used to the backfire it can knock you off of your feed and that's counterproductive given the circumstances we're in." Looking back at him she arched an eyebrow. "I suppose you're going to be getting a gun for yourself as well?"

"Do you even have to fucking ask?"

"Do you know how to fire one?"

"If it means not getting eaten by a zombie? I'll learn fast."

Rachel almost smiles again and turns her head to look over at where Quinn is standing. "Quinn? Can you get one of those metal tackle boxes in the other isle? I'm going to get a duffel bag. Maybe two."

The blonde glances over at her, both of her eyebrows arched. "You're thinking about fishing? At a time like this? You don't even eat fish."

"No, we just need the box. For storage."

"Oh." Quinn nods thoughtfully as though the thought makes perfect sense and then, quite to the surprise of Rachel, simply goes to retrieve the aforementioned box. The fact that she doesn't question it doesn't slip past Rachel who merely raised both of her eyebrows in question before disappearing down the nearby isle to find where the duffle bags are.

She gets back to the counter shortly after Quinn, looks at the metal box sitting on the glass case. For a moment the guilt of stealing things gets to her but, well, desperate times really do call for desperate measures and as such she really has no choice but to suck it up and stop feeling guilty. Survival of the fittest and all that. The people who are the most resourceful were bound to fair a great deal better in all of this than the ones who weren't.

She puts the two bags down on the counter then steps around it so she comes up next to Noah. Heat is radiating off of him like a human heater and were in colder she could have appreciated it. At the moment it just makes her anxious. "Noah? Take one of the duffle bags and put a couple of the larger caliber weapons into it. The hunting rifles. They won't necessarily be as effective but they're better for at a distance."

She expects a big protest when he looks at her but she doesn't get one. His gaze levels on her for a few moments before he takes the gun he had been rolling around in his hands onto the counter and takes one of the bags to go do what she asked. The gun is bigger than the one Rachel has but he's a much bigger person so that makes sense. She glances at him as he walks away and then turns the tackle box towards her, makes sure it's empty and deposits the gun into it.

"And what should I do while you two play militia?"

Brown eyes meet hazel. "Pick a gun." The gazes remain locked for a while before Quinn lowers her eyes and looks down at the counter.

The blonde takes her bottom lip between her teeth, chews on it thoughtfully as she looks at the guns behind the glass. She's never had a reason to consider a gun before. Why would she have? It wasn't as though Lima was actually a very dangerous place. Of course she knew logically that things could happen even in a basically safe town but that doesn't mean she ever had a reason to handle a gun or consider handling a gun. And she doesn't even want to consider handling one then because it seems so stupid. She knows she probably doesn't have a choice in the matter though giving everything involved. Though she really wasn't quite sure she bought the whole zombie apocalypse thing. She was starting to believe it though.

"I've never handled a gun before," she admitted a bit uneasily, resting one hand on the glass counter and brushing her fingers over it leaving smudges in its wake. "I don't know anything about guns." She wouldn't know one model from another even if her life depended on it. And she wouldn't know how to fire a gun whether she wanted to or not. With her luck she'd probably shoot herself in the foot. It wasn't exactly a comforting thought.

"When we get a chance I'll teach you how to fire one. My fathers taught me how to in case I should ever need to use a gun. It's come quite in handy today." Her fathers never thought she would need gun training for something like this though. She was sure of it. She also was sure that they never thought she would have to kill them. Not that they were actually alive to begin with. They were dead before she had to bash their heads in the way she did. But a part of her, deep down inside, still felt like she had killed her own fathers. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

"I just don't know…"

"Here." Moving back over to the case Rachel reached inside. She sort of wondered if Noah picked the lock or not. It was definitely possible that he had. And she couldn't find herself objecting to that given the circumstances. "I'd suggest a Smith & Wesson Centennial 442 Airweight. It's small enough for a woman to handle. It shouldn't give you too much backfire. You'll still get some but it shouldn't knock you off of your feet." Not if she was trained properly. And while she knew that it would be hard she could at least give her the chance to learn how to fire the gun without causing damage to people she didn't want to shoot.

Taking the gun out Rachel lays it on the counter and watches as Quinn picks up the gun like it's going to jump off of the counter and bite her. She can't blame the girl. She really can't because it has to be intimidating to know that she has to go and take a gun, that she has to learn to fire it, that she has to learn to defend herself with it because of the way the world has fallen into chaos. She doesn't blame Quinn for being uneasy. If you've never fire a gun before starting isn't an easy idea.

"I don't really have a choice, do I?" It's a rhetorical question and Quinn is positive Rachel knows that but she still looks up at her like she's hoping Rachel will tell her that she has another option. But she knows she doesn't. If things are really that dangerous then she has to be prepared just in case. She has to be prepared to possibly fire her gun even if she doesn't like it.

For a handful of seconds Quinn just looks at Rachel before she nods her head just a little and rolls the gun in her hand, examines it like she wants to memorize every part of it. Then she puts it down on the counter and nods just a little bit as if telling her that she understands that she needs to have the gun. She registers Rachel picking up the gun and loading it. She barely even pays attention while the brunette fills up the tackle box and then slides the gun back to her.

"Might want to not fire that fucking thing unless you got no choice," Puck says as he comes back over to the counter, the duffle bag hiked up on his shoulder. He doesn't fucking trust Quinn with a gun if she doesn't know how to fire it and no way the blonde princess knows how to fire a damn gun. No fucking way does she know how to handle it. She can probably learn but she doesn't know yet. He's sure of that.

"I'll teach her how to fire," Rachel assures him as she closes up the tackle box. She barely even bats an eyelash when Noah reaches out and picks it up. She sort of expected that he would do that because he's a lot stronger than either of the girls. He seemed to be taking to the protective male thing a bit which shouldn't surprise her. It's actually pretty amusing but she doesn't smile or laugh. It's not the right time.

Rachel watches as Quinn tucks the gun into her purse- how she still has it the brunette will never know and then she grabs the bag she had on the counter and without so much as another word she follows after Noah, makes sure Quinn is with them because she doesn't want anyone to be alone.

It doesn't take that long to actually put everything together in the truck. They load it all into the bed and Noah picks a gun out of the tackle box and before he can even attempt to do anything with it Rachel is taking it out of his hand and putting bullets into the chamber. She feels his eyes on her the whole time but she doesn't look up at him. She feels like if she does he'll have a look on her face that will make her hands shake and make her mess up with the loading of the gun. He's good at giving her looks that sort of makes her feel like her stomach is doing strange flip-flops. He's got quite an intense gaze when he wants to.

Puck has barely taken the gun back from her when he hears something in one of the stores behind him. It sounds like a shelf is falling over and his head whips around into that direction. He just stands there, his hand tight on the butt of the gun as he looks and really? He just wants to go back into the truck and get the fuck out of there. What's the point in checking out a random store? Why go looking for more trouble than they're already in? But oh, no, that's not a fucking option because Rachel is already heading towards the store with her gun raised and he curses under his breath because of course she wants to fucking investigate. And it's not like he's about to let her go alone.

He's following behind her with the gun in his hand. He's not really sure he knows what he's doing with it but whatever. He's not about to let her go alone. "Are you fucking kidding me? You're going to check out a strange sound? Don't you watch fucking horror movies? You never go to check out a strange sound. Good way to fucking die. Or, you know, get eaten."

"Then why are you following me, Noah?"

"Like I'm gonna fucking let you go in there on your own. If you get fucking eaten because I didn't follow you then I'm going to have fucking nightmares of your damn throat getting eaten out. No fucking thank you." Puck looks over his shoulder towards the truck and watches as Quinn steps into the truck. He's pretty sure she's locking the doors. He wouldn't blame her.

"So nice to know you care." Rachel knows her voice is coming out dry but that's because she's focusing on the task at hand. It's a pet store which shouldn't be intimidating but in this situation it is. Because she has no idea what she's going to encounter when she gets in there. The windows are broken in, the class of the door is broken in, too. She wishes she could say she was sure that it wasn't zombies that did that but she can't say for sure.

She stops about two feet from the door, maybe a little bit more as she takes a deep breath, keeps her gun lifted up to keep it level so that if anything moves she can fire. If necessary. But she looks at Noah as if silently asking him if he's ready. But how can you be ready for something like that? How can you be ready to go into a store that is possibly full of zombies? But if he doesn't want her to go into the store alone then he doesn't want her to go into the store alone. And she honestly appreciates the report.

By the time she heads into the store she can feel herself anxious; she can feel a cold sweat breaking out over her brow. She's nervous and she's pretty damn scared. She really is. But she can't let it show. She really can't. Because if she lets her guard down, if she lets it show? It'll make her vulnerable.

All of the shelves are turned over. The register is on the floor and the merchandise is everywhere. There is broken glass on the floor and the fish tanks are smashed up, the water all over the floor, the fish lying there dead. The cages where the birds once resided are dented and the birds are gone. It's scary to see the whole pet shop is such disorder. It's sad to see the whole thing having fallen apart that way. It was supposed to be a happy place. It really, really was. And now it's a mess.

Something moves and Rachel points her gun but it's not until she has the gun pointed that she sees what it is. It's a kitten. It's a tiny little kitten. Noah curses rather loudly and she lets out this slow, shuddering breath that's sort of laugh before she crouches down and picks up the little gray kitten in her free hand. She's quite glad she didn't fire that gun because if she fired the gun and ended up hurting or killing that little kitten she wouldn't have ever been able to forgive herself.

"There's no way that cat made that sound," Noah hisses at her though there's no real malice in his voice. He doesn't sound angry at all. He sounds like he's warning her which she can understand. They need to be careful, they need to be cautious. She can't blame him for that. She would rather he be cautious than reckless given the circumstances. If he got reckless there could be a lot of pain and blood and violence, death. She's glad he's being on the money. She's very, very glad that he's being careful so that people won't get hurt. It's sort of nice to see him being protective.

"Maybe a shelf was settling and hit into another one," she suggests in a whisper, holding the little kitten close to her chest. She's not really sure _why_ she's holding the kitten so close to her, only that it's a very real and very nice reminder of life in the world and she's thankful for that given the insanity and the death all around them. Or, well, not necessary death but people that were dead and are coming back. And having that little kitten close to her feels nice.

"Maybe," Noah agrees though she's not quite sure he actually believes it. He doesn't sound very convinced and she can't blame him for that. Better to be safe than sorry and all that. Her mind goes to Quinn back outside and she hopes that she's alright out there. She's sure Quinn is going to be careful but she can't say for sure. Nothing was certain just then.

Rachel opens her mouth to say something, to say that they can leave but then there's another sound. There's another sound, something shifting and her mouth closes. She holds the kitten closer to her like it's going to help her even though she knows it's ridiculous. But she lifts her gun back up and points it towards the back of the store. She's not sure what's there and she's got this fear curled up deep in the pit of her stomach and she is afraid her hand is going to start shaking. But she keeps it steady, she keeps it level.

Noah hasn't lowered his gun at all. Even when the kitten came out he kept his gun up like he was sure that wasn't the only thing that was moving in there and it turned out he was right. But she's still not sure what's in there. It could be another animal, a bigger one. It could be a zombie or it could be a living person. She has no idea what's back there. And the fact that she had no idea was making her extremely nervous. Not that the whole situation didn't make her nervous. If it didn't? Well, that would mean she was going numb and if she went numb? Well, who knew what would happen.

Noah moves, heading towards the fallen shelves like he's going towards the back of the store and Rachel wants to tell him not to risk it but she doubts he would listen to her. Of all the things Noah did well taking advice wasn't always one of them and the machismo thing didn't help, men feeling the need to be the protectors and all of that. She supposed she understood it. Fundamentally they were larger than women, stronger. It made sense that they should think they had to be the protectors. It doesn't mean that she likes the stereotypes any though.

"Noah…" Her voice comes out much softer than she thought it would but he just waves a hand at her as if telling her that she should keep quiet. She doesn't appreciate being waved off that way but she also understands that he's trying to concentrate so she can't be all that mad. If it was for different reasons then she would be rather pissed indeed.

Something moves again and her heart feels like it's in her throat. Her tension must be enough to emanate from her body because the little kitten tenses in her arms. She tries to calm down enough to stop the kitten from being upset, from tensing too much. She doesn't want the kitten to panic and try to squirm free, maybe scratch her to death, maybe run off and get itself killed. So she holds it tighter and tries to calm herself down at the same time. It's not an easy thing to accomplish.

"Be careful." She knows she should be quiet but at the same time she can't stop herself from trying to remind Noah not to do anything stupid. The last thing that she wants to do is to see him get killed. She doesn't want to see him dead. She doesn't want to have to put a bullet in his head. And if he gets bitten and she's there? Well, she'd have no choice but to put a bullet into his head and she really, really doesn't want to do that. She'll do it if she has to. She just doesn't want to think about that possibility.

"Rachel?"

Her eyebrows furrow at the sound of the voice, a voice most definitely not belonging to Noah. He's a lot of things but feminine sounding isn't one of them. And that's most definitely a feminine voice. Her gun wavers for a moment. She was pretty positive that those things didn't know how to talk. Or, rather, that they couldn't talk any longer. It would go against all logic if they could suddenly talk. Wouldn't one of them have spoken before then? Not that she had encountered _that_ many of them but the point still remained that it seemed unlikely.

There was another sound and Noah's gun didn't waver. Not even as a blonde head appeared behind the shelves. It isn't until the face becomes clear that he lowers his gun. "_Shit._" Noah lowers his gun and runs his free hand over his face. "Fucking hell."

"Brittany?" Rachel lets out the breath she didn't even realize she was holding. The blonde girl is standing behind the shelves, her huge cat clenched tightly in her arms. What she's doing back there isn't anything she can even begin to explain or understand. It doesn't make any sense that she would be there. Well, it only does because Brittany has such love for her cat.

The blonde smiles slowly, hugs her cat closer to her chest and turns slightly. "Rory! It's Rachel and Puck. It's okay. You can come out." It isn't until the brunette boy stands up that Brittany turns to look at them again.

"Brittany…" Rachel adjusts the kitten in her arm. "What are you doing in here?"

"I came here to get things for Lord Tubbington. It was empty and those things came. We hid in the back room. They couldn't get in the door. Rachel, what are those things?"

"They…" How was she supposed to really explain what they were? It isn't like saying they were rabbits or anything quite that simple. "They're nightmares, Brittany. Are you okay? Are either of you hurt?"

"We're okay." Leave it to Brittany to be smiling like that with everything going on in the world just then. Only Brittany could be that cheerful at a time like that. Only Brittany could be so innocently naïve when the world was falling apart around her. Sometimes she wishes she could be more like Brittany, she could more easily see the light in things. She really and truly wished for that sometimes. But sometimes she figured it was good to see the dark in life, too. Because at least then she could be prepared for the bad.

Hugging the kitten closer to her Rachel shifts her grip on the little animal as she looks at Brittany and Rory standing there in the mess of a pet shop. Her gaze moves to Noah as he tucks his gun into his waistband. His gaze meets her and for a few beats they just look at each other before Rachel clears her throat and looked back at the other two people in the room. "We should go," she finally says. "We're meeting with Kurt and his parents at the school. Quinn is waiting in the truck."

"Quinnie is here?" The smile on Brittany's face widens and she looks at Rory as if checking to see if he shares her excitement over Quinn being there. It's sort of adorable to look at. But Rachel can understand being excited that her friend is alive. The others? Well, they don't know who else is alive. She _does_ hope that others are going to start popping up out of the woodwork so to speak.

"She is," Noah confirms with a quick nod of his head. "We can't stay in here long. It's not safe. You two should come with us." For all of his attitude, the truth is? He really cares about whether or not those people live or die. He isn't that willing to admit it out loud but that doesn't mean he doesn't care. He's always going to care.

"Where are we going?" Brittany starts to step around the counter but stops to look at Rory. The brunette boy looks at her for a moment and then seems to understand what the look is for and he crouches down, picks up a box that has a few supplies in it that Rachel can only assume are for the cat.

"We're meeting Kurt and his family at the school," Rachel tells her as the two of them step around the counter. Putting her gun back into her waistband she reaches up with her now empty hand and scratches the cat in her hand behind the ear. "Noah?" Turning her head she looks at him, her eyes sort of wide and vulnerable. "Do you think you can take some things back to the truck for this kitten?"

Noah looks at her like she just lost her mind. "_What_?"

"I'm not going to leave this innocent little kitten to get eaten. They'll eat anything that's living. And I can't have this little kitten in my arms here and then just let it go to get eaten." She pouts at him, if even tempted to start quivering her bottom lip at him just so that she could get him to agree to do that for her.

She doesn't have to quiver her bottom lip though. Instead she just ends up smiling because he moves around the counter and crouches down to get supplies for the kitten, grumbles underneath his breath as he grabs a bunch of things- a little box, a bowl, some litter, food. He sticks everything in the box and stands up, moves to head out of the store but stops, and grabs a deconstructed carrier that they'll have to put together in the end. She lifts the kitten up and presses her face against it to hide her smile.

"You're a royal pain in the ass," he mutters as he comes up next to her. "And you're going to have to cover us."

"I can do that." She takes her gun out of her waistband and then heads towards the front of the store and slowly makes her way out, gun at the ready just in case. The coast is clear for now so she just makes her way to the truck, keeps her gun steady and knocks on the driver's side window with the butt of it when she gets there.

Quinn turns her head sharply at the sound and looks carefully to make sure she knows who is there before she unlocks the doors and shoves the driver's side open. "All clear, I take it?"

"You could say that. We have a couple of tagalongs though."

"I can see that." The blonde's eyes go to the kitten in Rachel's arm and then back up to the brunette's face, her eyebrows both arching. "A kitten?"

"The vegan in me can't leave it to die." She steps back from the truck so that she can watch Noah and Rory load the cat supplies in the bed with the rest of the stuff they go. Noah's just locking up the back when something catches her attention, movement down the street. At first she isn't sure what it is. There's no way to be sure until whatever it is enters her line of vision. But once it does she knows instantly by the jerky movements it's one of those things.

"Guys, get in the truck," she urges. "Get in the truck now. _Right now_." Out of the corner of her eye she sees Noah turn to look at her but she's already moving around the back of the truck to go to the passenger's side, gun pointed at the thing. Its head turns, its face half gone, a mess of blood and flesh like something either smashed into it or bit its face off. She isn't sure she wants to know which.

Quinn opens the passenger's side door and Brittany rushes in followed by Rory. The brunette boy reaches for Rachel's arm but she just thrusts the kitten into his arms and closes the door. If she fires the gun with that cat in her arms she'll scare it half to death. And the thing is coming towards the truck now so she knows she has to fire. "Get in the truck, Noah."

"Are you fucking crazy? Leave the fucking thing."

"Get in the truck."

"Not until you do, Berry. Cut the crazy for five fucking seconds."

"Damn it." If she could see him around the truck she'd glare at him but she can't. The thing is getting closer and she curses under her breath and just squeezes the trigger. The bullet hits the thing in the head sends it rocking back before it collapses to the ground. And for a few seconds there's only the sound of the gunshot lingering in the air. But then, as if she just rang the dinner bell, another one of those things steps out of the store down the street. "Okay…I do not have enough bullets in my gun for this."

She slams her hand against the passenger side door and Rory flings it open. Before he can even grab for her she's scrambling into the cramped truck and slamming the door shut behind her, Noah climbing into the driver's side half a second later. She hits the button to lock the doors. "Go, Noah. Go."

"As if you had to fucking tell me that." It takes him all of about two seconds to start that truck, shift gears and take off down the street far too fast except the speed is totally necessary. In the mirror Rachel can see the zombies getting smaller and smaller as they get further away.

From Rory's arms the kitten lets out a little mewling sound and paws at her shoulder. And really? She's more than happy to take that little critter and snuggle it because it's the closest thing to normal she's had all day.


	5. The End Of The World

When Mike Chang woke up that morning he certainly didn't expect to wake up to a zombie apocalypse. As a matter-of-fact that was the last thing that he ever expected to wake up to. But the least expected could happen, sadly. And so when he woke up and went downstairs and found his dad being eaten by _something_ that he couldn't even consider human anymore? Yeah, he pretty much thought he was stuck in a nightmare. A nightmare he really, really wanted to wake up from but didn't seem to be able to. His brain seemed to be stuck in pause.

It wasn't until that thing turned to look at him and let out a sound that was more like a growl than anything else that his brain started working again and he took off running. He ran right back up the stairs- which he knew was stupid but he was understandably freaked out. He ran back upstairs and into his room, dropped to his knees and slid as far under the bed as he could to reach out and get his bat. He heard that thing on the stairs, footsteps heavy and clumsy as he reached, fingers grabbing for the metal piece of sporting equipment.

The thing was already in the hall when his hand finally closed around the bat and by the time he got it out and rolled over the thing was there in his doorway, mouth bloody, pieces stuck between its teeth that looked like flesh. (His stomach churned at the knowledge some of those little bits and pieces were probably his father.) It growled, a low and guttural sound that made Mike's hair stand on end and then it moved. It moved a lot quicker than Mike thought it would, all but lunged at him.

Mike swung the bat the best he could in that position. It hit the zombie upside the head and sent him off his feet. He landed too close to Mike for comfort and when the thing started snapping his mouth at him Mike scrambled to his knees, brought the bat up over his head and slammed it against the thing's head again. Something crunched and it was sickening. But he swung again. The crunching was louder that time, blood splattering out of the spot where the bat hit, the thing's mouth still opening and closing in a desperate attempt to get to him.

Mike brought the bat down a third time and blood sprayed up, hit him right in the face. It smelled rancid instead of coppery like blood usually would. The thing's eye popped out of its socket and the mouth opened and closed two more times before it laid still, its head caved in, brain matter on the side of the bat.

Dropping the bat he let out this shaky breath, lifted up the front of his shirt to wipe desperately at his face, wanting the blood off of his skin. And somehow it still felt like a dream. Kneeling there in his room with a dead zombie on the floor it still felt like one great big dream. It was like he was pulled into a horror movie or some sort of video game. Because zombies weren't supposed to exist. They were horror movie monsters; they were figments of the imagination. And yet one had been chowing down on his father in the living room so apparently they weren't figments of the imagination. Apparently they were very, very real.

His hand shaking slightly he picked the bat back up and gripped it tightly, made his way down the hall to the bathroom so he could clean up his face, clean off his hands, his senses on high, adrenaline making him more alert than he thought he would be. He needed to clean up and he needed to change and he needed to do it fast. Because if he knew anything about zombies? Well, it was that his father was about to walk up at one at any time and he really didn't like the idea of smashing his father's head in no matter how bad things had gotten between them for a while. He was still his father.

His mother was nowhere to be seen and when he looked out the window her car wasn't there either so he hoped beyond all hope that she was alright, that she was out somewhere hiding. He changed his clothes in record time and grabbed his phone, dialed Tina's house number and just waited. He waited and waited as the phone rang and rang but there was no answer. And that worried him more than it normally would have. Because if something happened to her? He wasn't sure how he would handle that.

Shoving his phone into his pocket he kept a tight grip on the bat in his other hand, sat down on the bed and quickly pulled on his shoes and then he just ran out of his room. He ran out of his room and down the stairs, tried to ignore the gory mess on the floor that was once his father and grabbed his car keys out of the bowl on the coffee table he threw them in when he got home the night before.

He was halfway to his car when he heard someone calling his name. And when he turned around he saw Tina. He saw Tina running down the street towards him, her face covered in tears, her hands covered in blood. She ran right up to him and threw her arms around him, buried her face against his chest and cried so hard her entire body shook. His free arm went around her instantly and he held her to him, looked in the direction she had come to make sure that nothing was following her.

He let her cry for a moment or two- he wasn't sure how long- before he pulled back from her enough to look at her face. He asked her what happened, if she was hurt; he asked her where the blood came from and she told him that her parents were dead. She told him that she found them lying in their room torn apart. The habit she had of locking her bedroom door at night had probably been the one thing that saved her because her father woke up early every morning, went downstairs, got the paper and didn't bother locking the door when he brought it back up to the bedroom to read it. It was their pattern. And leaving the door unlocked had probably been what sealed his fate and the fate of her mother. But her door being locked had been the thing that probably saved her.

It wasn't until after he was sure that Tina wasn't hurt that they climbed into his car. They climbed into his car and they drove around for a while. But after a while driving around seemed stupid so that's why they were sitting in the parked car in an empty parking lot, Mike's bat on the floor by Tina's feet, her body curled up as small as it could get in the passenger's side seat like she thought maybe she could curl up into herself and hide away from everything that was going on. And he couldn't really blame her for that urge. He would want to curl up into himself too if he wasn't so focused on keeping them safe.

His phone goes off in his pocket and it startles them so much they both jump. He had pretty much forgot he even had it with him with everything going on. But a text meant that someone else he knew was alive. Unless zombies had the ability to actually text which he hoped they didn't. If they were that intelligent they were all pretty much screwed.

Reaching into his pocket his fishes out his phone, Kurt's name appearing across the screen. He glanced down at the name for a moment and then at Tina before he finally looked back at the phone and checked the message, dark eyes skipping across the screen. "It's Kurt," he tells her in a voice that's barely above a whisper. The car is so quiet that it seems appropriate to whisper. "He says that he saw Puck, Rachel and Quinn. They're all meeting up at the school." He lowers the phone to rest it against his lap as he looks at her. "Do you want to go meet with them?"

There's safety in numbers, he knows that, but if she doesn't want to go then he won't make her. They'll figure out something else. But they have a better chance of being safe, of surviving if there are others with them. If he learned anything from zombie movies it was that when you're on your own you have a better chance of being hurt or killed. Or bitten and changed. And the idea of Tina being bitten and him having to kill her makes him feel sick. And the idea of him being bitten and not being around to help protect her doesn't sit very well with him either.

For several moments Tina just sits there looking out the passenger side window and he's not sure whether it's because she's thinking or because with everything going on she's not quite sure how to react. Either one would be understandable. Nothing in their world remained simple if people were returning from the dead and eating other people. No, they were definitely living in a nightmare.

"Okay," she finally says after a moment, turns her head to look at Mike sitting there. When she had found out he was alive it had been like a miracle had been bestowed upon her. Her parents were gone and there was nothing she could do about that. But Mike was still there and that meant she had at least one person she cared about dearly still there with her. It meant that she hadn't awoken to a world where everyone she knew was gone. And yes, it's scary, the idea of meeting up with the others but it's also sort of comforting. Because that means that others are alive; it means that they have friends out there that are just as scared and lost as they are.

"Okay," she repeats, her voice sounding much more sure in her answer than it had the first time she answered him. "Let's go meet up with them."

"Okay." Mike nods a little, sends Kurt a quick text to let him know he and Tina were together, that they were going to go there and meet them at the school. Dropping the phone into the console once he's done he reaches out and takes her hand in his, squeezes down on it. "We're going to be okay," he promises her even though he knows that he can't really promise her that. Anything could happen. But he knows he'll do the best he can to make sure both he and Tina make it out of everything alright. He won't just abandon her. He'll do whatever he can to take care of her. And she needs to know that. So promising they'll be alright is the only way he can think to do that.

"Yeah." She doesn't sound entirely convinced but he doesn't blame her for that. And he can't even bring himself to try to tell her that she should have faith, that she should believe more. Because he understands why she's not so sure about that. And so he just leans over and kisses her, he kisses her like he's sealing his promise and with one more squeeze to her hand he releases it, starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot to drive to the school. 

* * *

><p>Sam Evans had gone out for a run shortly after sunrise. He hadn't been planning on doing anything of the sort but his brain was in a strange place lately. Lately all he could seem to do was think about Quinn and that wasn't the best position to be in. Yes, he and Quinn had mended things after their breakup the prior year and they had become friends but they were nothing more than that. So the fact that he was thinking about her more and more was strange to him.<p>

He had spent the entire school year pretty much obsessed with the idea of getting back together with Mercedes and that wasn't to say he didn't genuinely care for Mercedes. He did. He even would go so far as to say he had loved her to an extent. But things with them were different. Whatever spark that had been there was gone and the spark he felt for Quinn, that spark that had prompted him to tell her he wanted to marry her one day was back.

That wasn't to say they were back together or anything of the sort. They weren't. But their friendship was making him question his feelings towards her and the thoughts he had believed long gone were back full force. And the time he had spent talking to her lately hadn't helped. If anything it just messed with his head more than he cared to admit. It wasn't her fault but it was happening all the same.

So when he got up that morning and everyone else in the Hudson-Hummel household had been asleep he climbed out of bed, got dressed and decided to go for a run. He thought the fresh air would do him some good. But after running for a while he decided to stop. And so he sat down in a nearby park, tried to get his head wrapped around everything that was on in his head.

It was quiet, too quiet for the time it was by the time he took a rest. It was like the rest of the world had fallen away or decided to go into a long, long sleep. He didn't understand why there were so few people out at that time of day but he didn't question it. The peace was welcome after the way his head was that day. And sitting in the park with his music was just the refuge he needed at a time like that.

He wasn't sure how long he was sitting there before he noticed someone else walking into the park. They were moving with all jerky gestures like their muscles were aching and for a bit he just sat there. He sat there and looked at them, contemplated whether or not he should say anything to them. It seemed like the woman could use some help and if the person needed help? Well, he couldn't bring himself not to offer it.

Pulling one of the ear buds out of his ear he stood up from the bench he had settled down onto, his pale eyebrows furrowed. "Hey!" he had called out. "Are you okay?"

The woman turned her head in both directions like she was looking for the sound of the voice and then her gaze landed on him. She didn't say anything. She just looked at him and then she kept moving. She kept moving towards him in those jerky movements though she seemed to pick up some speed. She was by no means fast but faster than she had been, like she was determined to get somewhere, to get to something though he wasn't sure _what_. Logically if she needed help then she would move faster than that or say something instead of moving in that slow, jerky way.

It wasn't until the woman got closer that he saw the mass of gore that was her chest. The shirt had been all but ripped away, her flesh exposed, bloody and shredded. The white of bone was clear as day even through the blood and the sight made him gag. Gore in horror movies was easy but seeing someone in that state right in front of him? Well, that was something else entirely. And yet she kept on moving like that huge injury wasn't even there.

When she got closer she opened her mouth and let out this guttural sort of growl, blood pouring out from between her lips. And it was then he noticed that her eyes were clouded over like a corpse. And with a soft curse he took off running. He wasn't even sure what direction he was heading. He just knew he had to run. He had to run and get the fuck out of there because something was seriously wrong.

He ran and ran for blocks. He ran as fast as he could, ran until his lungs started to burn and his legs felt like jelly. After all the running he already had done that day his body didn't want to be moving at that pace anymore. It wanted rest and it wasn't getting it.

That's how he found himself sitting at the edge of an alley, his back pressed against the wall of a building, his legs curled up to his chest, his music long since forgotten, his heart beating rapidly despite the fact he was just sitting there though he reasoned it was pure adrenaline that had made him move that fast and that was making his heart practically beat out of his chest at that point. Adrenaline and nothing more.

Sam Evans sat there in the alley for what felt like forever trying to wrap his head around what he had just seen. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. maybe he was just stressing himself out so much that his brain decided that he needed to think of something else and gave him something scarier to focus on, something that he would be able to put before thoughts of Quinn Fabray and whatever it was he was feeling for her.

But that brought up the question of why his brain would think of something like that, why it would put him in a living horror movie. It wasn't like he had gone to sleep watching zombie movies or anything and it was rooted deep in his subconscious at that point. No, it wasn't that. So the theory that his mind was playing tricks on him seemed pretty faulty but no faultier than the notion that zombies were real and that woman in the park was a member of the walking dead. That just didn't happen. Zombies didn't exist in real life. He knew that. Everyone knew that. And yet he had seemed to find proof of them while taking a break from his run. So he just sat there trying to figure out what was actually going on.

After a while though he pulls himself out of his thoughts and decides that whatever the case may be- whether this whole thing is just one big nightmare or its reality- he needs to figure out a way to be safe. There's that whole theory that if you die in your dreams you die in real life and he really didn't want to test that theory. So the best thing for him to do was to try to stay safe. Just stay safe and get back to the house and then if he was asleep, well, he would wake up. And if the world he was currently in wasn't a nightmare then at least he'd live.

He's sitting there trying to figure out where he is in relation to the Hummel-Hudson home when he hears something. At first it sounds like paper rustling on the street but when he actually looks out onto the street it's not. It's not even close to that. It's something much worse. It's one of those things, a zombie or whatever it is. And it's so close to the entrance of the alley he can't run out without being far too close for comfort, close enough to get bitten. And the last thing he wants to do is get bitten.

Standing up he stumbles back a bit in the alley, moves as far back as he can hoping that the thing won't see him, won't hear him but of course it does. It hears him and looks at him and starts to move towards him, bares its teeth. And when his back hits the wall at the end of the alley he knows he's pretty much screwed. Whether it's a nightmare or reality he's screwed.

He slides down to the ground in the alley, hands groping for anything that can be used as a weapon and finding nothing. And as the zombie gets closer his just closes his eyes tightly, closes his eyes and takes a few slow, deep breaths to try to prepare himself for the inevitable- as screwed up as the inevitable is in that moment. 

* * *

><p>Mike is driving towards the school when he notices one of those things making its way down the street. And his immediate instinct is to speed up and get out of there. Not that he doesn't know that being in a car means he has a better chance of getting them away from the thing to begin with. He just doesn't want to look out the window and see that thing. It's a reminder of how screwed up everything is right then. But as he's driving he notices something else, something other than the zombie. He sees someone in the alley, someone that's backing away from the entrance and after sitting there for a few moments he realizes just as he passes the alley that he knows that person. He recognizes them and that's why he doesn't get more than half a block before he slams on the brakes.<p>

Tina turns her head to look at him, her expression clearly confused as he starts to unbuckle his seatbelt. She reaches out and lays a hand on his arm, her dark eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she looks at him. "Mike, what are you doing?"

"That was Sam."

"What?"

"Back there. Sam is in an alley and one of those _things_ is about to get him. I can't just leave him to get killed."

"Mike, if you go out there…" It's not that Tina doesn't care about Sam's safety but it seems like a no win situation either way. Either way one of them could end up dead but if Mike goes out there both of them could end up dead.

"He'd do it for me," he insists. Reaching over he grabs the bat off of the floor and as he's sitting back up he kisses her, tries not to make it seem like he's saying goodbye to her. "If something happens and I don't come back to this car you drive to the school. You hear me?"

"Mike-"

"Promise me."

He waits. He waits until she gives him a hesitant nod and then he opens the door and climbs out of his seat. He slams the door behind him and runs. He just runs towards the alley, bat held tightly in his hand. He runs so fast he almost runs right past the alley. And when he looks inside the thing is close to Sam, so close that he can almost grab him or fall to his knees and just bite the blonde boy. And if that happens? Well, if Sam gets bitten then there's nothing that Mike can do. Once you're bitten you're infected and there will be no saving him.

Mike doesn't hesitate. He moves instantly into the alley holding the bat with both hands by then and raises it up high over his head. He brings it down hard onto the zombie's head and then does it again and again, listens to the crunching sound of bone being broken. He keeps bringing the bat down until the thing crumbles to the floor, blood pooling out of its skull.

He lowers the bat down as he watches Sam sitting there, eyes still clenched shut and it's not until the blonde opens one eye cautiously, looks at the thing lying on the floor and then looks up at him that he says anything. "You bit?"

Sam blinks up at his friend for a bit before he looks down at himself like he's not sure of the answer himself even though logically he knows that if he'd been bitten he would have felt it. "No…no, I'm not." Pressing his hands against the wall behind him he used it for balance as he stood up. "Dude, where did you come from? There was no one on the street when that thing showed up."

"My car." Sam feels pretty stupid for not having figured that out but he hadn't been thinking about cars or anything at that moment. He had been thinking about how he was about to be eaten alive. And screw what people said about drowning or burning to death. Being eaten alive definitely would be worse than that, to be torn apart while you were still breathing? To have pieces of yourself get ripped apart and devoured? Yeah, that was definitely worse.

"Mike just…thanks, dude."

"You'd do it for me, too," Mike replies with a slight shrug of his shoulders. He glances behind him and then nods toward the entrance of the alley. "We gotta go. Tina's waiting in the car."

"Where are you guys going?"

"I'll tell you in the car."

Sam opens his mouth to ask more questions but figures getting off the street is probably a really good plan just then. And so when Mike heads out of the alley he doesn't hesitate to follow him. He just steps over the body in the alleyway and follows him out on the street to the car, doesn't even wait for an invitation to open the back door and climb in. Tina looks over at him and gives him this sort of wilted smile, one that's obviously worried and he can't blame her. "Now you wanna tell me where you're going?"

"The school," Mike tells him as he puts the bat back at Tina's feet. He clicks the button to lock the doors and starts the car back up, pulls away from the curb without even looking. There's pretty much no one around which is scary as all hell. It either means more people are those things than they even want to consider or people have already taken off. Maybe they're hiding. He can't say for sure and he's now sure he wants to know the answer to that question.

"The school? Why are you going to the school?"

"Kurt texted us," Tina answers, her voice soft and uneasy. Technically the text went to Mike but it's a small distinction that she doesn't feel the need to expand on. "We're meeting up there. Trying to stay together. To stay safe. Puck, Rachel and Quinn are coming, too."

Sam feels his stomach do a sort of flip-flop. Quinn is alright. Quinn isn't dead or one of those things. And he can't say that the news doesn't make him happier than he thought it would. "And the others?"

"We don't know. We just have to wait and see, I guess." Mike doesn't sound any happier about it than Sam feels. Their friends, their other friends, could be out there lost and in danger or dead. Maybe one of those things. It's something he doesn't want to think about.

Sitting back in his seat Sam closes his eyes and lets out a harsh breath, runs his hand over his face. "What the hell is going on?"

"The end of the world."

The deadly calm sound of Tina's response should frighten him but for some reason? It doesn't.


End file.
